


So Far

by Trefoil_9



Category: Undertale
Genre: Angst, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Gen, Handplates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 14:17:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11488110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trefoil_9/pseuds/Trefoil_9
Summary: The Royal Scientist contemplates his morally dark existence. Handplates AU flashfic. (Handplates AU (c) Zarla on DeviantArt)





	So Far

_I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er._  
-Macbeth 3.4.142-46.

The Royal Scientist lay on his back, fingerbones interlaced above his chest, staring at the ceiling.

Time trickled past at its inexorable pace. His migraine throbbed in time. He waited, for the time to pass.

And for sleep, but he doubted that it would come. It rarely did when it was supposed to anymore. He’d fall asleep on his desk, sometimes in the middle of writing, and find the last several lines unreadable when he woke. He’d be overwhelmed with fatigue while walking down a hallway. Once he passed out in the throne room…

It made no sense, but it was the way things were.

He seemed to see the two buttons he’d envisioned once before, and tried to forget, shimmering above his hands in the dusk.

_X Mercy X Fight_

Not an insane visualization perhaps. Pressing a button showed a level of agency, with a comfortable level of detachment inserted. Something his mind would come up with, he told himself, but unimportant. Unreal. Not something he should waste time thinking about.

But time was moving slowly.

It wasn’t like pressing a button, which was quick and clean. It was more like.. well, holding a button down. He held it down when he got out of bed in the morning. He held it down when he looked Subject 2 in the eyes and told him to stop crying. He held it down.

And it was wearing on him. It took strength to hold it down, as if the button, which in this case seemed more like a steadily tensing spring, were pressing back against him. He felt unable to turn back from the route he had chosen. It would be hard to go back. Go back—even the words suggested a paradoxical rewriting of time. It was impossible to ‘go back,’ in many ways. How could he change now? If he tried, it would take a momentous effort… and yet, it took such effort just to keep standing.

He knew what was happening to him.

He was adapting to the feeling, to holding the button down. The EXP around his soul had a cold, granular feel. It shielded him from feeling unnecessary remorse. It was useless now.

And he would do this. It seemed to be an unchangeable fact that the Barrier could not be broken without sacrifice.

He was no monster now, and certainly no human. He was a frozen shell, trying to trace the flow of time across a blank ceiling.

No turning back now.

The period of time he’d set for lying down ended, and he sat up slowly and swung his feet onto the cold tile floor.

_X Fight_

He stood up. Propelled himself into the kitchen. Prepared coffee. Forced the coffee down his throat. Turned on the lights in the lab.

_X Fight_

They would see that. They were always so alert in the mornings. Maybe because they actually slept. He’d seen them, entangled in each other, more like two colors of yarn than two skeletons.

_X Fight_

He walked down the hallway, under the lights. Touched his hand to the sensor outside the cell. Made eye contact with the taller of the two forms inside. Sure enough, they were sitting close, 2-P’s arms and legs wrapped around the limp 1-S.

_X Fight_

“Subject Two, come with me.”

2-P stood, eyes searching his face, faintly glowing.

_X Fight_

He was tired. So tired.

2-P came out into the hall, and he removed his hand from the sensor. The lasers sprang back. He turned.

_X Fight_

“This way.” 

**A/N:[Handplates](http://zarla.deviantart.com/gallery/57456341/Handplates) belongs to [Zarla](http://zarla.deviantart.com/). **


End file.
